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So, Dry January draws peacefully to a close. It seemed an odd idea – a twitch of residual Puritanism, which demands that pleasure be paid for by self-flagellation. (Unless self-flagellation itself be your pleasure, then heaven knows where you go. Swindon, perhaps.) Odder yet was that people apparently sought sponsorship for their teetotal month – raising money for not doing something. This, though, appeared a promising initiative. I’ll not be eating bananas any time soon, so please feel free to bung 50 quid to the Red Cross.

At any event, it’s all coming to an end. For those of you who have stuck it out, there should be pride, and the prospect of a boisterous February. Doctors will warn that compensatory excess undoes any good procured by abstinence. Take no notice. If the medical profession had the faintest idea about alcohol, it would stop telling us on alternate days that red wine ensured (a) certain death and (b) eternal life. This fuddled thinking results almost certainly from the doctors issuing their edicts after their own long, hooch-crazed lunches.

Let us return, then, to February as a month of celebration. I suggest you come to France. This is the greatest drinking country in the world. France has more of the planet’s finest wines than anywhere else, an outstanding array of spirits, and is even getting the hang of beer. And, aside from visitors to carnivals or ski slopes, nobody in his right mind travels to France in February. So you might, when not drinking, have entire beaches, villages and forests to yourself.

For the proper success of a French drinking holiday, it is as well to have some background knowledge. Here it is:

Historical French consumption guidelines: as much as you can swallow, daily: In northern French textile factories, 19th-century male workers had a wine allowance of six or seven litres a day, females four or five. At the turn of the 20th century, there was so much cheap plonk swilling around France that bars sold wine by the hour – pay a flat rate and neck as much as possible in 60 minutes. Those were the sprightly, infant days of binge-drinking.

In my time in France, I’ve known farmers who drank three or more litres a day – as a British farmer might drink tea – and seemed little the worse for it. One, a retired grape-grower in the Corbières, reckoned there should be special driving licences for men like him. “Before I’ve had a few glasses, I shake like a virgin bride. Dreadful danger to other road-users,” he said. “But after a good lunch, I’m as steady as an oak. A quite exceptional motorist.”

In Claude’s view, people of his age and status should hold licences stipulating they were not to drive unless over the legal alcohol limit. He pegged out at 82, so it got him in the end. French wine consumption has dropped off a cliff since Claude’s heyday, from some 250 litres per adult in 1960, to around 50 litres a year today. That’s still ahead of every other nation on earth, apart from the Vatican.

I mention all this simply to assure you that if you overstep your mark of two glasses (or two bottles), you’re not going directly to hell. On the contrary, you’re bang in the mainstream of a fine tradition. Another sip and you might storm the Bastille. Or the Novotel, depending.

Wines, a thumbnail guide: Bordeaux: See the châteaux-owners in the Médoc and it’s obvious they consider themselves cardinals of a wine-based religion. So let us be clear: we must not swallow whole the French spiel about spiritual relations with the earth and wines as their ethereal expression. This is lunacy. Wine is a drink, not a divine revelation. That said, it is a very rewarding drink. So please don’t stride in crying: “It’s all plonk to me; fill ’er up!” In fact, don’t say anything. Simply hold out your glass, look beatific and someone else will supply the words. French wine people always do. They can’t stand silence. You’ve now mastered Bordeaux. Carry on.

French wine consumption has dropped off a cliff, but they're still ahead of every nation on Earth (Photo: Getty)

Burgundy: There is much less Burgundy wine than Bordeaux (the ratio is roughly 1:4), so the key thing, once on the spot, is to drink constantly, just in case. Good sense requires that you also eat pretty persistently, so you will grow portly. Thus does one become indistinguishable from the locals, for whom plumpness is a duty. Once plump enough, they put on pantomime robes and caps, and are inducted into confraternities, to voice more orotund nonsense about wine. Humour them. The alternative is folk dancers.

Champagne: The Champagne region runs on superlatives. You’ll need a stock. “Excellent” is OK, “sublime” and “exquisite” much better. The posh champagne houses like to give the impression that their wines are created by gentlemen in silken gloves, hand-crafting bubbles. The reality is out in the countryside, down on the farm with mum and dad, brother and sister, buckets, tractors, rubber pipes and, on the wall, a photo of great-grandad who dug out the cellars with a pickaxe. Try Champagne Barnaut in Bouzy, or Champagne Vilmart in Rilly-la-Montagne. They have the finesse the world needs, but also wheelbarrows and wellies.

Drink more spirits: When I was a younger, I’d go into French cafés at breakfast and be unable to get to the bar for fellows fortifying themselves pre-work with eaux-de-vie. You asked for a coffee, the barman said, “Arrosé?”, you nodded “yes”, he added a slug of Calvados and you forgot about Rice Krispies. Everyone seemed happy, which is the purpose of breakfast. I’ve not come across a café like that for ages. Fewer people are tackling hard liquor before 9am. Indeed, hardly anyone at all in France drinks the nation’s own spirits. Cognac production is around 162 million bottles a year, but 97 per cent is exported, primarily to the US, where Jay-Z and fellow hip-hoppers are highly visible fans. Armagnac, Cognac’s tiny brother, and apple-brandy Calvados are both also found more often abroad than in France, where cool people drink whisky or vodka. Because they’re foreign, they are contemporary. But we are British. French spirits are foreign to us. If you want to be hip, get cracking. Booze it or lose it.

Cognac production is around 162 million bottles a year (Photo: Getty)

Cafés and bars: Drink wine in wine bars; that’s what they’re for. Drink wine in village cafés, too. It will have you classified among the whiskery old fellows who drink solidly through the day. It doesn’t do them much harm and won’t do you much, either, though, after time, you will turn whiskery. Or drink pastis. It’s the best summer drink ever, though Frenchmen in bars near the workplace aren’t that bothered about the seasons. Meanwhile, intellectual people drink pastis with a sense of irony, as their UK equivalents might eat battered cod or attend home games of Tranmere Rovers. Either way, you’re in the clear.

And beer? There’s a lot of good stuff – in northern France, mainly, and, strangely enough, named after abbeys. No wonder monks schedule church services all through the night. It’s to coincide with their need for a pee. Bon voyage.